There's word from some scientists today that there may be three times more stars in the universe than was previously thought — and many, many planets that could support life.
If they're right, it means there could be as many as 300 sextillion (a number we weren't familiar with, to be honest) stars. Want to write that down? It's a 3 followed by 23 zeroes. Like this:
300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
The research, led by Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum, is being published by the journal Nature. In an interview with Space.com, von Dokkum said the findings are based on data gathered when the researchers were analyzing "red dwarfs" — stars that are dimmer than our sun and much smaller.
The "faint signatures" of those red dwarfs in eight galaxies "located between about 50 million and 300 million light-years away," led to the new calculation of how many stars are out there, Space.com writes.
300 Sextillion Stars
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